Upper Canyon Trail

The Upper Canyon Trail is the signature hiking route of Caprock Canyons State Park, exploring the dramatic red canyon terrain of the South Plains escarpment and offering excellent opportunities to view the park s famous Texas State Bison Herd. The loop winds through eroded canyon walls of russet and crimson mudstone, shale, and sandstone laid down during the Triassic period and now exposed by millions of years of erosion along the edge of the Llano Estacado. The bison herd, descended from a small remnant population saved from extinction by Charles Goodnight in the late 19th century, roams the upper canyon and surrounding grasslands and is frequently visible from multiple points along the trail. Caprock Canyons is sometimes called the Texas version of Bryce Canyon for its colorful, heavily eroded badlands terrain, and the comparison is not undeserved. The canyon walls glow brilliant orange and red in the long light of morning and late afternoon, making photography particularly rewarding at those times. Golden eagles and red-tailed hawks hunt the canyon thermals overhead, while mule deer, feral turkeys, and roadrunners inhabit the canyon floor. The South Plains escarpment edge visible from the upper sections of the loop is one of the most dramatic landscape transitions in Texas, where the flat tabletop of the Llano Estacado suddenly drops hundreds of feet into the broken canyon country below. Carry plenty of water as sources are nonexistent on the trail.